Penny eyes up the other little girls. Her best friend, Samantha sits next to her. They are holding hands under the table. Mary Jane stands at the top puffing and blowing at the candles on the chocolate cake. She giggles, Janie has hundreds and thousands dotted along the top of her mouth and Freda has ice cream on her nose.
“Can we play games now. Can we?” says Penny
Mummy replies “shortly darling. When Mary Jane has blown out all her candles and made her wish.”
“I love games” says Penny
“Me too” says Samantha and “me toos” echo round the table.
With one last puff the seven candles are gone and Mary Jane sits down with a big smile across her face
“Me too” she says.
All around the table there are calls for games.
“The egg and spoon race”, “the sack race”, “Oh I love the apple bobbing”, “hide and seek, let’s play hide and seek”
Mary Jane pipes up “oh yes, let’s do hide and seek”
“I’ll hide, please let me hide” Penny gets in quickly. Already her little heart is thumping in her head and her hand slides excitedly out of Samantha’s grip.
“Can I come too?” squeaks Sammy
“Yes, yes, let’s hide together”
They head for the sheds. They scramble on all fours into the chook house. Samantha giggles as Penny starts pecking the ground then tries to lay an egg.
“Come on Penny”
They dive back out and follow the cow smells until they find a door slightly ajar. They nudge, it squeaks, they yelp. It goes quiet. They push a bit harder, and then squeeze into the stall. It’s empty. Just smelly. There’s a stack on hay in the corner which the girls climb onto to jump down behind. It’s a three sided little house. One side is rough and full of sticks of hay that scratch. The other two sides are wooden and smooth. It’s dark. Above them is a black wooden sky. The squat in the corner.
“They’ll never find us here. We’ll win” says Penny
“Oh, they will, won’t they? I don’t like the dark.”
“Oh, don’t be silly”
“Penny, I wanna go”
“Sammy, you wanted to come”
Hours or minutes go by.
“It’s smelly. I wanna pee” whimpers Sammy. “Penny?”
“Sssh, I think I hear voices”
The girls snuggle closely, hugging each other. They try not to breathe. The voices pass by and in no time at all it’s quiet again. And it seems darker.
“P e n n ….y?”
“Sssh, I’m listening”
A long way away, Penny can hear her Mummy calling.
“Penny, Penny. Where are you. Sammy?”
“Sammy, we’ve won. They’ve given up. Let’s go”
Out in the open, the sun has almost gone and the yard is full of dancing shadows from the trees. Sammy rubs her arms and shivers. She whimpers and hiccups and clings tightly to Penny’s hand.
“Come on Sammy. Let’s go and get our prize”
Penny marches on. Sammy shuffles.
“Mummy, we won”
Mummy turns around. Her face looks weird and a little tear slowly wanders down her cheek. Then she smiles, the biggest, widest grin, from ear to ear.
“M u m m ……..y” and Penny bursts into tears.
The birthday tea
Childd's games
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4 comments:
Jenny says:
The dialogue is well done in this story.
I found it a little difficult to follow, possibly because the paragraphs of action were very dense compared with the dialogue sections. It may have worked better for me if they were broken up a little more into shorter paragraphs.
I wasn't quite sure why Penny's mother was hosting Mary Jane's birthday party, either.
It's a nice concept - those must have been incredibly patient kids!
Heather says:
A fun story - the first few paragraphs really capture little girls' birthday parties.
I liked the detail of their selection of the hiding place, and of crawling into it. I think there was a little trouble with timing - given that it probably WAS hours they were there, rather than minutes, you needed to give us a picture of some more of the things they did to keep their 7-year-old minds engaged while they hid long enough to scare the mothers.
As far as character development goes, I felt I got to know strong-willed Penny (right from "eyeing up the other girls") and her more submissive mate Samantha.
I loved the way that you developed the story going from a happy birthday party, girls giggling and so happy into Penny's determination to win at all costs, Samantha's concerns turning into fear and the finale in which Penny gets present to how the game for her had turned into a nightmare for her mother and others.
Maybe look at tightening up some of the wording around the use of "Mummy". "Mummy" works when used by Penny to address her mother but doesn't sound right when using "Mummy" as the name for Penny's mother. So “Mummy, we won” works fine, but "Mummy turns around. Her face looks weird" sounds a bit weird.
Kerry says:
I love the picture you set up for the reader in your first paragraph Sue. And the story has a real authenticity that had me entranced.
I was distracted by the lengthy description of the 'hayshed' where the girls hid. So much detail slowed the story down for me.
I loved Penny's bravado and her vulnerability at the end when she realizes how worried her mother had been.
Maybe you were writing in a hurry but the punctuation is a bit ragged. I think it's always worthwhile reading over our stories and editing them for spelling and punctuation as a writing discipline.
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